


i know you're gonna (keep on)

by SafelyCapricious



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Justice, Murder, vengence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7514377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma shouldn't feel safe with him -- safe with what he's out there doing.</p><p>But she does.</p><p>Very, very vaguely a Punisher AU. Very, <i>very</i> vaguely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know you're gonna (keep on)

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "stay over", over on tumblr.

“Simmons,” Skye says, and her voice sounds odd but Jemma is in a very delicate step of her analysis and can’t look over to see why.

“Just….one…mo…Ha!” Jemma leans back and grins, victorious. They don’t have the right equipment for this, of course, so it’s all more complicated than it needs to be – but if she had to set the whole thing up for the fourth time because she couldn’t get the sample in the right place she would’ve screamed. “What is it?” she asks, finally turning to look at her friend.

“We have a, ah, present for you. Down in the morgue.”

There are a number of officers who call any body or tissue they want her to analyze a ‘present’. Skye has never been one of them; the younger woman is rarely serious but always shows respect to the deceased.

“I see,” says Jemma as she strips off her gloves, even though she doesn’t. It’s possible Skye lost a bet of some nature – if she’s not making ridiculous challenges to her partner, she’s making them to her boyfriend – but it seems rather minor to be that. In any case, whatever has Skye acting strangely is worth seeing immediately. “Shall we?”

“Ah,” Skye says, and shifts her weight, fingers twining together and she looks at the ceiling, not leading the way, “you know the vigilante?”

Jemma pauses in reaching for a fresh pair of gloves to take with her, hesitates, then tries, “Yes?” There seem to be more and more vigilantes popping up every day – Helen thinks they’ve been there all along, but with the populace willing to believe anything since the invasion of aliens it’s become harder for them to hide. Jemma doesn’t agree – at least not entirely – too many of the vigilantes are simply normal people, not enhanced, who are trying to do some good. In any case, she’s the one Director Coulson has talk to the vigilantes, whenever they manage to catch one, since she’s a civilian volunteer (using the work she does here for her third doctoral thesis) and doesn’t have to report every little unlawful thing she does.

Plus, she likes to think at least, that Coulson trusts her judgment. So when she suggests they let someone join the force, or keep them locked up, he tends to do so. It’s been very interesting, and rewarding, when it works. So she’s not lying when she says she knows the vigilante, even if she doesn’t know which one Skye is talking about.

It couldn’t be – Jemma goes cold as she follows Skye towards the morgue – but no, Skye wouldn’t call the dead bodies of one of the vigilantes – even one of the worst ones – a present.

 

***

 

The body is beyond mutilated, and it makes even Jemma’s stomach lurch a little to see it.

She hopes it’s not another serial killer – they’d just managed to catch the last one and put him behind bars and – Skye lifts the blanket over the body’s face and – it’s the serial killer.

“What?” says Jemma as she steps forward, thinking she must be mistaken. But no, it is most certainly Ian Quinn – the man who’d been ritualistically sacrificing female chemistry students for the past three months – the serial killer who they’d just managed to put away on the evidence that Jemma had found – the man who’d vowed he’d kill her.

“He came with this pinned to him,” Skye says, handing over a photocopy of a note written on hotel stationery.

Jemma takes the paper but can’t tear her eyes away from Quinn to examine it. “He was in jail.”

“Yeah,” Skye says, voice dark, “he was apparently trying to get a plea deal. They were transporting him back to the prison when he got taken.”

The noise she makes – shock and terror and surprise – prompts Skye to step closer and wrap an arm around her shoulders. “He wasn’t gonna get it, Simmons. He had nothing. Was just bein’ a creep.”

It’s not overly comforting. Of course, the man is dead – very, very dead – so it’s not like he’s actively a threat to her anymore.

She finds that unfortunately comforting.

Turning her attention to the note keeps her from expressing the fact, and then the small chill of fear is replaced with something else. Something soft and fluttering and – she does her best to keep her expression still as she reads the words again.

“Dear Jemma,” the note reads, “I saw your testimony. You’re incredible, and so brave. I thought I’d give you a present. I did promise to keep you safe. Caffeine is no substitute for sleep – don’t let Phil overwork you or I’ll have to kidnap you. Kidding.”

There’s no signature, but she knows who it is.

“Oh,” she says, and when she looks up Skye is watching her with concern in her eyes.

“Coulson wants you in protective custody.”

Jemma blinks, curls her fingers around the note and shakes it. “Because of this? Skye – he’s not going to come after me. He’s not – this isn’t a threat.”

“He left you a _dead_ body, Simmons – and threatened to kidnap you.”

Jemma suspects that pointing out he was kidding won’t do her any good – and saying that she’s sure he’d never hurt her will only worry Skye, so instead she shrugs.

 

***

 

“Hey,” Ward says, tipping her face up to the light with his hand curled around her chin, “you okay?”

She doesn’t try to smile, she already knows how much it will hurt her cheek and split lip, but she lets herself lean into his touch. “It hurts, but I’ll live. Thank you.”

He shrugs and opens his mouth to say something but stops before the words come out. His head tilts and his eyes go distant and she wonders what he’s hearing or thinking of, but before she can ask he’s straightened back up and is dropping a kiss to the top of her head. “Lets get you home.”

She closes her eyes and nods. She wasn’t worried, not once, while the Hounds of Hell had her – even when they pulled the drill out (not that they managed to use it) – and she tries not to think about what that means.

 

***

 

“Stay over,” she says, after he’s examined every inch of her apartment and settled her on the couch with an ice pack and pain medication. She's never asked him to stay before – not for more than her own checking of  _his_ wounds at least – but she's been thinking about it more than she should. Jemma isn't sure she meant to ask, but she has now and she won't take it back.

He stills – and if she weren’t looking right at him, if she couldn’t still see his ribs expand with his breath, she’d think he was a statue. And then he turns his head to look at her and her breath freezes in her throat even while her heart starts to race and she’s forcibly reminded of just who he is – just what he’s capable of. Not that the look he’s giving her has any violence in it, at least, not the kind she wouldn’t enjoy.

“I can’t tonight, sweetheart,” he says, his voice soft like distant thunder, and she blinks and he’s right in front of her. He touches her bruised cheek gently, presses his lips to her forehead and lingers. “I have things to do – and you’re hurt. Get some rest. I’ll keep you safe.”

And then he’s vanishing out the door, grabbing his long black coat off the hook as he goes.

It’s not until she’s starting to drift off that she wonders what he has to do – after all, she knows all the men in the warehouse died earlier that night.

(Two days later when her cheek has healed enough that she can cover it up with makeup and keep her friends from worrying needlessly, she goes back to work and finds that Daniel Whitehall – the man she suspects has been the cause of the newest rash of disappearances – has been diced into so many pieces. She knows it shouldn’t make her feel safer, but it does.)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Comments make me smile.
> 
> My writing tumblr can be found [here](http://capriciouswrites.tumblr.com/)! Come say hi!


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